Progress

August

New parent leave for Harry ended on 13th August, and most of his time has been focused on his day job. However, some progress on marketing has been made this month, liaising with reviewers and getting back in touch with the gaming community.

• Marketing focus with Meta advertising.
• Revamp of the newsletter.
• Creation of the Strategy Guide.
• Liaising with reviewers.

July

We were on new parent leave most of July, so not much happened! However, we did send out a bunch of copies of the game to reviewers!

• Sending out game to reviewers

June

June was a busy month for us! We welcomed Demi into the world, as well as received our manufacturer samples. June saw us join The Long Rest in Canterbury for an awesome game night as well!

• Game night at The Long Rest.
• Manufacturer samples received.
• Demi born, start of new parent leave.

May

In May we made a highly detailed hand-drawn map of Prima Solcul, the continent where the events of Quaeleon’s Quest take place.

• Highly detailed map created.
• Print and play version created.
• Test prints ordered from manufacturer in China.

April

Lovely Jubbly! In April we decided to take the tools we’ve been using to make our cards and package it up into a neat little piece of software I call “Jubbly”. It allows you to create whole decks of cards in a matter of minutes.

• Magic Beasts and Alchemy expansions created.
• Attended Baycon gaming convention in Exeter.
• Adapting all of the artworks to better suit the final printing methods we’ll be using.
• Lots of social media and marketing content creation!

March

March saw the first professional test prints come through – these took a quite a long time to prep for, getting all the packaging and artwork ready. Aside from this a lot of time has been dedicated to making content and research!

• First test deck printed at Ivory Graphics in the UK.
• Artwork for all packaging and cards drafted.
• A lot of scripting, prepping and filming of videos!
• Experimenting on TikTok with different video formats.

February

In February we attended the Paradice gaming convention in Worthing. We had a great time and got lots of great feedback, and met some interesting people to boot!

• First blind playtests with Necromancy expansion.
• Paradice gaming convention.
• Work on a game tracking API, so that important and revealing game stats are tracked from the Tabletop Simulator version (and potentially other versions).
• Processing of feedback from Paradice, including rules changes and card tweaks.
• Participated in a rules exchange.
• Lots of work on getting the cards and packaging print ready, including further talks with suppliers.
• Work on the cards to remove the possibility of any loops (with great help from some VIP supporters, thanks @Chakan!)
• Filming of our “60s Short Intro to Qualeon” video – great fun, thank you Matt and Sammie for helping!

January

After recovering from the holiday break illness, which lasted into the second week of January🤒 we got back on track, and created the first expansion: Necromancy.

• Creation of first expansion: Necromancy
• Testing of the Necromancy deck
• Updated the Tabletop Simulator game to include Necromancy cards
• Updated Tabletop Simulator to be able to easily update all the cards when necessary

December

December was a time of respite for us. We had been working hard and took a break over Christmas. During the holidays Harry fell ill for 2 weeks so progress stalled a bit 🤒

• A lot of work on getting the free Tabletop Simulator version ready
• Many friday evening livestreams
• Preparation for content over the holidays
• Christmas photoshoot
• Slight tweaks to card layout and card wordings

November

• Marketing research
• Improvements to the Health Tracker app
• Manufacturing quotes
• Playtesting, playtesting, playtesting
• Attending events

October

In October we have mostly focussed on doing a lot of playtesting, preparing for HandyCon 10 and creating some “marketing” material.

• Created a textured and rigged version of the cards and box in Blender to facilitate creating 3D scenes and animations.
• Got some stickers printed.
• Prepared a load of material for HandyCon 10, including posters, surveys, rules, a giant card, etc
• Created a “Quick Start” guide / poster
• Prepared and printed multiple copies of the latest version of the game
• Attended HandyCon from 27th to 29th October (read more here)
• Focussed on networking and following up with contacts
• Cogitating and planning based on feedback from the playtests at HandyCon

September

September saw some interesting new playtests with new people. These playtests led to us rewording and otherwise changing a lot of cards to improve clarity and ease of parsing the cards. We also did a lot of work on the lore side to try and establish the cards as part of a consistent world.

• Consistent wording for card effects, especially across similar effect types.
• Simplified wording for many effects.
• Established a place in the greater lore of the world for all the cards, and changed some cards which didn’t fit.
• Removed automatic highlighting of words on cards in favour of manual highlighting.
• Focussed on improving gameplay by directly targeting player psychometrics.
• First version of health tracker cards printed and tested.
• New AI tools are starting to allow consistent characters across many artworks – there was a lot of experimentation with this.
• Initial box design mocked up.

August

August was a month of refinement and tertiary progress. Things aside from the core game were worked on a lot, and further advances in AI image generation meant lots of fantastic new imagery.

• Statistical analysis of cards to improve game flow.
• Health tracker app created.
• “Underworld” faction introduced.
• Game uploaded to Tabletopia.
• Card layout changed for readability.
• Website created.

July

July saw lots of playtesting, with lots of slight card revisions.

• Lots of slight card revisions – Punji Pit was renamed Spike Trap for cultural sensitivity reasons.
• Card back design created.
• Logo finalised.
• Extended lore creation underway.
• Yellow settled as the colour of the Kingsmen.
• Health tracker cards created

June

Where it all started. Progress was very rapid at the beginning, with the first version of the cards created within a few weeks. In reality, work started during May, but really June birthed version 0.1.0.

• Initial concept created.
• First version created, first deck printed, first faction introduced (Dragons).
• Concept of ‘The Field‘ created.
• Recruiting mechanic introduced.
• Recruiting playtested and accepted as part of the deck going forward, birthing version 0.2.0.
• Second faction introduced (Kingsmen).
• Too much healing was slowing the game down, so some healing cards were removed.